Simone Schiller-Merkens

Universität Witten/Herdecke · RMI Institute of Management

Research on categorization and category dynamics has been rather silent on the role of powerful third parties in the self-categorization of producers. This study sheds light on this question by analyzing dynamics in the self-categorization of designers in the British ethical fashion movement. Their task of self-categorization is particularly comple...

Moral struggles in and around markets abound in contemporary societies where markets have become the dominant form of economic coordination. Reviewing research on morality and markets across disciplinary boundaries, this introductory essay suggests that a moral turn can currently be observed in scholarship, and draws a direct connection to recent d...

In these times of crises, capitalism and the far-reaching marketization of our societies has again become a subject of contestation and critique. Alternative organizing is one response to the critique of capitalism. As an embodied and constructive form of critique it takes place in prefigurative organizations and communities on the ground that expe...

Cooperatives, post-growth organizations, common good organizations, community-supported agriculture, transition towns or ecovillages are examples of alternative forms of organizing economic exchange. Their social practices embody and reproduce alternative moral values to the ones dominating the economy and society. They are regarded as prefigurativ...

Prefiguration unites organizations and collectives as diverse as post-growth organizations, common good organizations, community-supported agriculture, transition towns, or ecovillages in their fundamental critique of contemporary capitalism and the belief in the urgency of a major social transformation toward sustainability. It refers to realizing...

Keywords: prefigurative organizing, prefiguration, alternative organizing, moral markets, crises, pandemic, ethical fashion, social movements

Keywords: complementary currencies, prefiguration, prefigurative organizing, alternative organizing, imaginaries of the future, utopia, dystopia, global South

As one of the major causes of climate change, there is an urgent need for a fundamental transformation of the food system. Calls for greater sustainability underscore the importance of integrating civil society and the local knowledge of citizens in this transformation process. One increasingly relevant organisation that can actively engage a plura...

Cooperatives, post-growth organizations, common good organizations, community-supported agriculture, transition towns or ecovillages are examples for alternative forms of organizing economic exchange. Their social practices embody and reproduce alternative moral values to the capitalist ones dominating society which is why they are also regarded as...

While a fundamental crisis, like the current pandemic, can provide a “window of opportunity” inspiring novel utopias and opening up a gateway for bringing about broader social change, it may also present an enormous backlash for moral markets and their entrepreneurs. We know little about how moral market entrepreneurs experience the crisis and part...

The Farm to Fork (FTF) strategy of the European Green Deal aims at changing the destructive tendencies of contemporary food production, distribution and consumption. The fair transition to a more sustainable food system promises to reduce carbon emissions, food insecurity and biodiversity loss, and also to improve public health and to provide valua...

Moral struggles in and around markets abound in contemporary societies where markets have become the dominant form of economic coordination. The present volume advances our current understanding of the contested moralities of markets by highlighting the sources, processes and outcomes of moral struggles in and around markets, both through tracing t...

One challenge facing research on categories is to explain their content and the extent to which they gain meaning from cultural material that originates from moral arenas. This article suggests that categories are an outcome of strategic framing activities by which market members draw on prevalent master frames as cultural material to infuse an eme...

In this paper, we investigate the dynamics in the field of organization studies. We focus on the market for scholarly publishing and trace how many and which kinds of concepts have been developed and diffused in publications over the last 48 years. We argue that scholars in the publishing market must deal with two kinds of uncertainty: uncertainty...

Veröffentliche oder stirb! – Forscher stehen heutzutage unter dem enormen Druck, ihre wissenschaftlichen Leistungen in Form von Publikationen zu vermarkten. Doch in einer der führenden Fachzeitschrift zu veröffentlichen, ist sehr schwierig. Wie können Wissenschaftler ihre Publikationschancen erhöhen? Welchen Kriterien muss ein Artikel entsprechen,...

Der soziologische Institutionalismus zählt – auch unter der Bezeichnung Neoinstitutionalismus – zu den führenden Theorien der Organisationsforschung. Im Zentrum des derzeitigen Erkenntnisinteresses steht die Frage des institutionellen Wandels. Simone Schiller-Merkens stellt den aktuellen Forschungsstand dar und arbeitet die wesentlichen theoretisch...

Over the past decade, sociological institutionalists have displayed growing research in institutional change. The shift in focus from isomorphic processes of inherently stable institutions to institutional change brought about new theoretical challenges: How do we conceptualize institutions in a way that acknowledges their process character – as hi...